Karimayi

The story of the archetypal Mother, the mother of all Chandrashekhar Kambar s stories, variously called Mayi, Idimayi, and now Karimayi, is at the heart of this novel. The narrative of Karimayi moves through an astounding time span, beginning from the mythopoeic times of Goddess Karimayi s birth to the historical and cultural shifts in the life of a small rural community called Shivapura during the British colonial era. Written in the Kannada language in 1975, Karimayi breaks the familiar narrative of an idyllic and traditional village community getting destroyed by the incursion of modernity. Instead, the multiple and layered narrative of Karimayi weaves everything into itself the story of the village s past, the myth of Karimayi, the disorder that sets in with the invasion of colonial modernity and the lure of the city, but, most importantly, also of the disruption of another form of native modernity that the village community has already begun to incorporate into its rhythms of life. "